Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela opened their Southbank Centre residency with Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, two of Stravinsky’s most demanding works. The former youth orchestra remains one of the world’s most popular ensembles, and it’s hard not to be swayed by the enthusiasm and energy with which they play. Dudamel, however, can be a variable interpreter, and this turned out to be a concert of two very disparate halves.

Petrushka was by no means ideally successful. Dudamel opted for Stravinsky’s 1947 revision of the score, rather than the 1911 original, and the comparative leanness of the second version sits uneasily with the vast forces deployed. The strings sounded too dense, there was a lack of focus and clarity, and the more opulently scored earlier version would perhaps have been better suited to the SBSOV’s big-boned style. Dudamel, meanwhile, seemed unwilling to go to extremes in a work that demands them. The gaudy fairground scenes were nicely done, and the Moor’s music was suitably sensual. But Petrushka’s soul-shattering loneliness was played down, and the creepy supernatural ending didn’t generate the requisite frisson.

The Rite of Spring, however, was very different. Dudamel and the SBSOV are often at their best in music rooted in rhythmic dexterity and syncopated precision, and a couple of wayward moments apart, the score heaved with wonderful physicality. The thick string sound was appropriately earthy and primal here. Dudamel took the final Sacrificial Dance at such a precarious lick that one feared for the ensemble, though it held together with tremendous force.

There were a couple of encores: the final scene of Stravinsky’s Firebird, done with slowly accumulating majesty; and Aires de Venezuela, a ritzy arrangement of traditional music by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez, in which a maraca-playing percussionist danced his way through the strings. As one might expect, it brought the house down.